Environment committee Mr. Chair, I only hope the member is not proposing the banning or prohibition of wine. That's my only concern.

October 24th, 2006Committee meeting

Hugh Benevides

Environment committee Mr. Chair, in answer to that question, I believe it's a fair assessment.
Going back very quickly to the previous question, I believe that substitution prevents an opportunity, not a threat, to proponents. I'm not sure if Mr. Stack mentioned a study by the Toxics Use Reduction I

October 24th, 2006Committee meeting

Hugh Benevides

Environment committee Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Before getting to the sound science part of the question, I appreciate the question because it's an opportunity to make it very clear that we believe the virtual elimination list, while perhaps it should be retained in the event that it can be used, is not

October 24th, 2006Committee meeting

Hugh Benevides

Environment committee Thank you, Mr. Chair.
It's to identify the somewhat problematic language of determining, as is required.... It's the same provision, paragraph 77(3)(b) that I referred to earlier, “determining that the presence of the substance in the environment results primarily from human act

October 24th, 2006Committee meeting

Hugh Benevides

Environment committee Very briefly, I'd point to the fact that, as Mr. Lloyd correctly says, we have the powers, but then we look at the emergence of chemicals that come up that turn out to have these harmful properties. We look at brominated flame retardants and other examples. How is it that our leg

October 24th, 2006Committee meeting

Hugh Benevides

Environment committee Mr. Chair, I'd like to point out that among the list of brominated flame retardants that are not being proposed for elimination, one of them, decaBDE breaks down, I understand, to some of those other flame retardants that are being removed, so we ask, for example, why the deca is

October 24th, 2006Committee meeting

Hugh Benevides

Environment committee Mr. Chair, there are a couple of different areas. One is that, for different reasons perhaps, there is a reluctance to dedicate resources to chasing down the last molecule even in the sense of determining what is an unsafe level. We also expressed that we weren't in favour of the

October 24th, 2006Committee meeting

Hugh Benevides

Environment committee Mr. Chair, the question was whether we're headed in the wrong direction. I think the spirit of our comments today is that we have the tools to take action, as evidenced by the list of...I have nine here--and Ms. Wright informs me that it's now ten--on the list of prohibited subst

October 24th, 2006Committee meeting

Hugh Benevides

Environment committee Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Unfortunately, neither Dr. Khatter nor I have our finger on the precise numbers today, but fortunately our website, pollutionwatch.org, and our reports--and I say this because the information is there, not to do a commercial--on air emissions and water emis

October 24th, 2006Committee meeting

Hugh Benevides

Environment committee I think it's a very difficult comparison, because for every one comparison you have a competing one.

October 24th, 2006Committee meeting

Hugh Benevides

Environment committee Yes, this is why we advocate changing the focus from the individual releases back to that policy goal, and substitution is among the tools you would then use. And certainly that's exactly what REACH will encourage, to a greater or stronger effect, which we'll see in the months to

October 24th, 2006Committee meeting

Hugh Benevides

Environment committee Again, I'll be very brief.
I don't know of legislation that does that. I think when you look at the way the environmental objective is pitted against economic considerations, one could certainly find examples where the environmental objective is made because of the desire for fa

Environment committee Very briefly, I think what was just said is certainly correct. Those contaminated sediments are certainly the legacy in the sense as well that they remind us why we need to take those preventive steps. In my breaking down, in what I thought was a helpful way, the talk into retool